[jacksoncarter]

The question is, who makes the living and how? Do you want programmers with brains capable of creating software worth buying to be doing tech support? It's a waste of time for programmers like that to be doing tech support -- they should be programming!

The truth is that creators in our society do not make money. They sometimes make salaries. Sales people make money. Distributors make money. But the creators very often make almost no money.

We need to reward creativity in our nation. We need to reward the people who are clever enough to think of solutions to problems. The consumers are creating problems. We need fewer of those -- both consumers and problems.

So I'm not so sure really if it is possible for creators to make money without intellectual property and I definitely do know that without intellectual property it's easy for consumers to get content without paying anything.

[kiba]

The truth is that creators in our society do not make money. They sometimes make salaries. Sales people make money. Distributors make money. But the creators very often make almost no money.

Entertainment creators, yes. People who solve actual business problems? No.

So I'm not so sure really if it is possible for creators to make money without intellectual property and I definitely do know that without intellectual property it's easy for consumers to get content without paying anything.

Release something in the public domain. Try hard to make money, and report back if it is a success or not.

I don't even care if it is a failure, but I would like to know more data points about the viability of the public domain.

In my field, there has been a few downers/failure in open source game developers trying to make money. One guy eventually succeeded, making 43,000 dollars in the space of a few month. He was already making more money than the rest of would-be game entrepreneurs.

Now, I am making money writing games for a repeat client. My games are also BSD licensed. We'll see how this goes for future projects.